Kaldalis reached the main gate ahead of Onirioago’s group. He had to plan his next move in the few short moments he had before they caught up.

His instinct was to climb up the wall and observe from there, but that was unlikely to work out for him. The wall didn’t exactly offer a lot of cover for him while he was up there, so he’d need them to not look up in order to actually stay hidden. Not to mention that if they walked out of earshot of the walls, he’d never be able to catch up to them quietly. He’d either have to jump down off the wall, or run around back to the ladder.

Instead, he had to make the smarter move. At least, he hoped what he came up with was smarter.

Kaldalis hurried out through the gate and through the killbox. He managed to push aside memories of the fight against the malum captain on this very spot during the last Infernal Horde attack. Of the pain and fear. The press of bodies. Those long moments as it geared up for its blast, when he held Flicker for just the right second.

He knew he couldn’t afford to panic, especially about something that was well over and done with. There was plenty to panic about right now, and he was trying to keep a cool head.

So, instead, he scurried out the outer gate and looked for a place to hide.

The area had been mostly cleared of cover, but the encampments efforts on that front had been primarily to gather lumber for the walls rather than explicitly intended to open up the terrain. As such, there were a few scattered stumps that nobody had bothered to dig up.

The only way to actually use the stumps to hide was to lay down on the ground behind it, basically on his belly. Luckily the larger moon wasn’t out yet, and so he basically only needed to keep a low physical profile, and he would be able to stay hidden.

It took a little longer than he expected for Onirioago’s group to appear, but they emerged from the gate in a tight knot. As soon as they were outside the walls, they seemed to relax and spread out a little more. With the encampment behind them, the expedition leader grew more visibly relaxed. She raised her voice to be heard clearly by the whole group, no longer afraid of drawing attention in camp.

“The defining feature, though,” she said, “is the pair of fangs. Long and sharp. Dangerous even after the fish is dead.”

She looked around, peering intently into the darkness around her, and Kaldalis ducked his head behind his hiding spot. He heard a murmur from the group of people with her, and when he poked his head out again, she was holding up the deacon tetra he’d handed her the previous night - or, he supposed, earlier that morning.

“They’re called deacon tetras,” she said once everyone had a good look at it, “and if you repeat that name to anyone else in camp outside of this group, I’ll have you strung up faster than you can get my name past your lips.”

There was a grim nod among the group, though Onirioago let the threat hang in the air a moment longer.

This was serious. More serious than Kaldalis had thought.

He’d been unsure about why she’d needed him to keep secret about the fish. His first guess was that they were very valuable, and that flooding the market with them would destroy the economy. Or that they were used in an extremely potent potion or meal, and that the demand for them by the league’s adventurers would drive the fish to extinction.

Her words implied something more sinister. They implied that the deacon tetra was contraband, and that even she feared the consequences of being caught with it.

“They’re hard to catch,” she said when she felt the pause had been long enough to get her point across, “and that’s why I’ve selected you all to go on this mission. Your loyalty wasn’t enough, you needed to have the fishing chops to actually pull these in.”

Even from here, Kaldalis could see more than a few of her assembled fishing hit squad puff out their chests with pride at the compliment.

Simple minds took simple manipulation.

The right words at the right time, and she made them feel big and important. As long as she could give them that high, they’d chase it to fill whatever demands she had of them.

“The reason this comes so late,” she continued, “is that they’re also hard to find. They can only be caught deep in the jungle, where there are significant dangers, including things more terrifying than even the Infernal Horde.” She gestured to one person near the middle of her mob of followers, and the group parted to look at them. “And that’s why I have provided you all with a guide.”

Standing there in the middle of the group, trying to look imperious and unconcerned, was Dalgaard.

Kaldalis had to bite his tongue to stop from cussing out loud.

What the fuck was the kid doing wrapped up in this? True, Kaldalis had been a part of this mess, but that had been manipulation. Deception. The way Onirioago was talking, they had to understand that they were getting into a bad scene. They were receiving orders to aid and abet what was pretty clearly something very wrong, and they weren’t even flinching.

“There are major threats,” Dalgaard said, addressing the group as if they were the expedition leader’s partner in crime. “But with my help, we should be able to circumvent most of the avoidable threats, and not be caught off-guard by the unavoidable ones. With our numbers, these threats will be manageable. You all just have to listen to me, and follow my lead.”

Their manner was in dramatic contrast to Kaldalis’s most recent interaction with them. He hardly recognized them as they played the calculating hardass here.

What was their game?

Or was this the real Dalgaard, and Onirioago had positioned them to join up with him to have the guide on hand for this phase of whatever the fuck this was supposed to be.

But that was literally unbelievable. Placing someone over an hour out of the encampment miraculously along the route he took through the jungle? Them getting in trouble and needing to be rescued after hours of what had to be unexpected stalling? Even if Onirioago was a mastermind on par with Thanatos, that was impossible.

This had to be Dalgaard playing a part after having been swept up in unexpected events.

“Treat Dalgaard’s words as my own direct orders,” Onirioago said, and her voice had just enough of that sultry tone that made Kaldalis’s skin crawl at the memory of her unwanted attention. “I don’t doubt that you all could individually find a deacon tetra, but not safely. And maybe only one, at that. You need to work together, and you need to know where you’re going. Dalgaard is just the tool you need to accomplish this.”

The more he thought about it, the less Kaldalis could blame Dalgaard for their behavior. They’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kaldalis had seen to that. They were turning it into an advantage. He suspected that Onirioago had seen through the act as easily as Kaldalis had, but they had her over a barrel on that front. Kaldalis had warned her that he’d faced dangers, but hadn’t been specific about what he’d seen. Dalgaard had that information, and presumably hadn’t blurted it out as soon as he was face to face with her, which was impressive in its own right.

“The window for this is closing fast,” Onirioago said. “It’s soon going to be ten times harder to move deacon tetra unseen. I can’t stall forever, and I can’t circumvent the incoming authorities without resources. I need you lot to have five hundred of them by dawn.” She raised a finger and pointed around at the group with a glare. “I expect you could get twice as many in a night, and I will expect that of you. But this is the first trip, so I’ll go easy on you. Don’t get used to it.”

Kaldalis thought back to the fifteen minute battle with his deacon tetra. Even divided between twelve people, and even if they didn’t have a few hours of hiking ahead of them, five hundred was impossible. It had taken him the better part of a week of fishing to have six hundred pale perch. Onirioago was giving them a ridiculous demand, and putting the onus on them to stand up for the pride she was stoking in them to control them.

An effective tactic, but not one that could reasonably return five hundred deacon tetra.

“You’ve got your spoon lures,” Onirioago continued, “and you have your guide.” She reached forward and grabbed Dalgaard by the shoulder, guiding them to the head of the group and pushing them gently towards the jungle. “Now get going. Moonlight’s wasting.”

Kaldalis stayed in his hiding spot as the group followed Dalgaard out into the jungle. Onirioago watched them go, arms crossed over her chest. As they vanished into the jungle, he worried that she was just going to stand sentinel there until they came back, trapping him here. But after a time, she seemed satisfied and returned to the town’s gate, disappearing within.

Creeping carefully back to the gate was probably overkill, but he couldn’t just stand up and walk yet. If Onirioago was lurking, there was no telling what she’d do to him for spying on her. Especially if the deacon tetra was something so illegal that even her authority as expedition leader couldn’t protect her from the blowback from just saying the name.

He was suddenly very aware that he had one in his inventory.

Kaldalis got close enough to the gate that he could see that Onirioago wasn’t waiting there to ambush him. As if freed from a spell, he scrambled to his feet and jogged through the gate. He started to make a beeline back to his tent, but adjusted course slightly.

He couldn’t stick his head in the sand and let Onirioago do whatever the fuck it was she was doing. But if he was going to interfere, he wasn’t doing it alone.

Mostly because he didn’t even know where the fuck to start.